1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a cartridge for consumable product for a printer, such as printing powder or toner, for a laser printer or else ribbon for printing by thermal transfer of ink. The expression thermal transfer is understood to mean any process for transferring ink from a ribbon by means of a thermal source, and hence including the process of sublimation.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the case of a laser printer, the latter includes an electrostatic developing drum on which is formed, by an electrically charged roller, a layer of electric charges. Angularly downstream, the laser scans each generatrix which passes so as to form a latent image according to the data which control it. When the generatrices of the roller subsequently pass by a cartridge of pigment, or toner, the particles of the latter are attracted by the remaining charges and the latent image is thus revealed so that its particles of pigment are deposited gradually on a sheet travelling against a replenisher of the roller. A fuser subsequently causes the toner to penetrate into the paper so as to fix it therein definitively, aftersetting the thickness of pigment via an adjustable-potential blade.
The quality of the image depends on the collection of settings of the various voltages of the above elements and on the temperature of the fuser, as a function of the type of pigment, its make and the manufacturer of the printer.
Furthermore, this optimum collection of settings varies as a function of the percentage of pigment remaining in the cassette which contains it.
In practice, when a new cassette of pigment is installed, the printer automatically prints a test pattern and an optical sensor determines the quality of the result obtained, so as to determine empirically a substantially optimal collection of settings. However, the sensor provides only relatively poor information, given the number of setting parameters, so that the overall setting is only coarse and it offers no guarantee of long-term reliability.
In the case of the thermal-head printer, the thermal source of the printer, using ordinary paper and a thermal-transfer printing ribbon, comprises a write head including a plurality of heating elements controlled electrically by logic cues.
The printing quality depends directly on the thermalhead control characteristics including, in particular, the printing ribbon characteristics.
As characteristics of a thermal-transfer printing ribbon may be cited:
its type: employing black ink, colour ink, monochrome or employing multiple regions of colour, through thermal transfer proper or through sublimation, metallized or the like,
the region of colour at the instant of printing,
the colour of the region,
the level within the region at the instant of printing,
the start of the relevant region,
the level within the ribbon at the instant of printing,
the definition of the colours of the regions of the ribbon.
There is therefore a great variety of possible ribbons.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,491,540 teaches a cartridge for consumable product for a printer which includes a data memory card, specifying the characteristics of the product, which can be linked by a connector to a controller of the printer.
With the aim of optimizing the printing quality of printers receiving a consumable product, the applicant has therefore had the idea of proposing the invention which will now be presented.
To this end, the invention relates to a cartridge for consumable product for a printer, comprising an electronic chip for storing technical data characteristic of the consumable product and for controlling printing, the chip being arranged so as to be read, which cartridge is characterized in that the storage chip is disposed on a removable support card and is arranged for the downloading of the technical data.
In one interesting embodiment, with, as consumable product, toner, the storage chip (4) holds data for setting the voltage of at least one printing roller and the temperature of a fuser for fusing the toner.
The invention will be better understood with the aid of the following description of two preferred embodiments of the cartridge of the invention, with reference to the figures very diagrammatically representing in section an inking ribbon cartridge, and the printing part of a thermal-head printer, here belonging to a fax machine.